I just remembered an incident; My grandfather had to call his sister who lived in a different country. The middle class and the poor did not have access to Int

I just remembered an incident; My grandfather had to call his sister who lived in a different country. The middle class and the poor did not have access to International Direct Dialling because the central telecom commission had not accepted the demand for more international connectivity. There were no private telecom companies only state owned because we were good socialists. And International Direct Dialling was a luxury reserved for the political elites and the rich industrialists. No what we had to do was book a "person-to-person" call. They would give you a 2-3 hour time slot in which the call might be connected and you would have to wait by the phone. And when it was connected the operator could hear everything. This is mid-1980's I am talking about haha